Justice for Sansa

“I dreamt of a maid at a feast, with purple serpents in her hair, venom dripping from their fangs. And later I dreamt that maid again, slaying a savage giant in a castle built of snow.”
—A Song Of Ice and Fire, A Storm of Swords

Earlier this month, I wrote an article called “The Case for Complex Female Characters” that urged the media to include narratives of diverse groups of women in their stories. One of the examples I praised was Game of Thrones. This series features many interesting female characters who have their own character arcs and are not treated as sexual objects by the narrative, which casts a critical eye on patriarchal society.

While I will still defend George R.R. Martin’s book series—despite its faults—the television adaptation has reached a point where its treatment of most of the characters and story is so disappointing that I can no longer support it. This past week’s episode is a great example of the increasing apathy the writers show towards female characters especially. Gilly, after nearly being raped (as if there haven’t been enoughnon-canon sexual assaults in this show already?), shrugs off the sexual assault as ho-hum and “rewards” Sam one scene later. “Strong female character” Tyene Sand strips in front of Bronn for no reason other than to tease him (and meet HBO’s obligatory booby quota) as her half-sisters roll their eyes, probably thinking: Are we just here to throw poisonous whips around sexily? Really? And Sansa Stark, who overcame abuse to become a player in the game of thrones, is humiliated, degraded, and sexually assaulted in a fashion eerily similar to what she was subjected to under Joffrey (except worse).

Although all of these departures from the books upset me, it is the way Sansa’s character arc has been butchered on the show that frustrates me the most. But I should’ve seen it coming, because the show has erased and downplayed some of Sansa’s most powerful moments in the books for a while now.

It’s time that Sansa Stark got the justice she deserved.

But why Sansa? You ask. She’s okay and all, but she’s so weak. Especially compared to Arya/Brienne/Daenerys. She should’ve just killed Joffrey/Ramsay and gone out with honor like good ol’ Ned.

Sit the fuck down and let me explain you a thing about Sansa Stark.

In Game of Thrones, we are introduced to a cheerful 11-year-old named Sansa Stark (Yes, 11…two years younger than show Sansa and apparently old enough to be betrothed). She believes that all knights are valiant, all maidens fair, and that the handsome good guy will always beat the ugly monster. You know, like 11-year-olds raised on songs that sound like they could be in Disney movies would think. So when she finds out she’s to marry Prince Joffrey, she literally can’t imagine that her life will be anything but perfect. Naïve? Obviously—and it won Sansa many haters during the first book and season of the show. I’ll admit I was no fan of Sansa’s delusions about riding into the sunset with Joffrey and bearing his golden-haired babies myself when I started reading, but there’s a little thing called character development.

Because sexy goth costume change=character development

While the show would have you believe that she went from being a “stupid little girl” to a dark pessimist with a sultry voice overnight, the thing I find so fascinating about Sansa’s character in the books is that even though she becomes roughly critical of the world she lives in and uses her charm to manipulate others, she is still pure of heart. No matter how bad her situation becomes, she displays pragmatism rather than pessimism; she puts on a smile and plays along instead of dying honorably, because she believes she is the last Stark of Winterfell, and her survival means saving her house. She doesn’t become fixated on revenge like her fan-favorite sister, nor does she take up fighting. Sansa has everything she needs to survive, and that is her strong, gentle heart—not unlike Daenerys’—that inspires others to change for the better.

In an amusing twist of fate, the person most influenced by this little girl who loves lemon cakes is none other than Westeros’ favorite sardonic killer: Sandor Clegane, aka the Hound. From early on in the book series, Sansa develops some sort of odd fondness for Sandor after he reveals to her how his brother burned half his face off—something he has never told anyone before. The scary, ugly warrior she once feared becomes more like a grumpy, irritable puppy dog—and one of the only people she can open herself up to after her father is killed. He helps Sansa realize the only way she’s going to avoid her father’s fate is if she learns to become a better liar, and she in turn plants a nagging idea in his head that maybe—just maybe—he has the potential to become one of those “true knights” she rambles on about.

What? You don’t remember any of this? That’s because most of it didn’t happen in the show. Littlefinger told Sansa the story of the Hound while she cowered in fear. Sansa spent most of season two shaken and demoralized while the Hound creepily lurked nearby and ratted her out to Cersei (to be fair, he creepily lurked around her in the books too, but Sansa was mostly cool with it. It’s a strange, fascinating relationship). Sure, occasionally she roasted Joffrey with a zinging one-liner, but the Sansa of the books didn’t just subtly diss Joffrey as much as she could without being beheaded; she actively tried to escape King’s Landing with the help of Dontos Hollard, the drunk she saved from Joffrey’s wrath (a subplot that doesn’t occur in the show until season four). In the second book, the majority of Sansa’s scenes show her displaying agency by making escape plans and trying to convince the Hound that he’s a cynical grump. In the second season of the show, the majority of Sansa’s scenes show her as a victim of abuse.

But Sansa’s most powerful moment—arguably one of the most powerful moments in the entire series—is the scene between her and the Hound during the battle of Blackwater. The show version of the Hound was rather tame when he randomly showed up in Sansa’s room in a half-assed attempt to convince her to leave with him because he’d never hurt her (hence why many show-only viewers scratched their heads as to why she didn’t go with him). In the books, he was drunker, scarier, and desperate for her to run off with him like he was one of those knights in the songs she loved. Sansa, obviously terrified by his drunken behavior, refused him. So he held a knife to her throat and demanded a song from her. Remember, Sansa was at the ripe old age of 12 in the books when this happened.

It was basically like the Phantom of the Opera, only more intense.

Then Sansa did something that you could say is really stupid or really brave: she sang a song, a prayer, begging the Mother to save him. The Hound, realizing what a piece of shit he had been, started sobbing and left. It was one of the most powerful, character-defining moments for Sansa, and the show diminished it. Instead, her most dramatic moment was a scene of horrific abuse at the hands of a psychopath who she had no power in influencing. Sansa getting Westeros’ most bloodthirsty killer to realize he needs to go rethink his poor ass choices is far more interesting—and empowering— than her being married off to abusive Joffrey 2.0 for shock value.

But the little things from the books that make Sansa Sansa should also not be glossed over. Like many teenage girls, Sansa enjoys making up stories and gossiping about guys with her friends. Sansa’s girlfriends, Jeyne Poole and Myranda Royce, don’t appear in the show, but Shae serves as a more than satisfactory replacement during seasons two and three. For a while, it was nice to see Sansa have someone she could trust on the show…or so she thought. Despite claiming she would “kill” for Sansa, Shae betrayed her out of jealousy during Tyrion’s trial. And while we’re on the subject of “clingy jealous girls,” the Myranda in the show adaptation (Ramsay’s lover) is anything but a bosom buddy to Sansa.

Sansa’s moments of quiet defiance against men who aren’t Joffrey are also omitted. She refuses to kneel to Tyrion during their forced wedding (I will smack anyone who says, “But he’s a good guy so she should be grateful!” She was barely 13 and a prisoner to his family). When she escapes to the icy, dark Eyrie with Littlefinger, he offers her a pomegranate and she refuses (proof that GRRM reads his Greek mythology. If the reference is lost to you, see “Six Seeds Under” for details), foreshadowing how she’s not going to resort to Littlefinger’s shady antics and become his “Queen”: she’ll do things her way. By this point, she’s sick of being married off. She’s sick of being a pawn. Littlefinger is just a means to an end for her to regain the North…not a means to an end for Littlefinger to possess the North through her. Book Sansa, as shown in a preview chapter from the sixth book in the series, is perfectly happy having fun with her friends and toying with annoying suitors like Harry the Heir…hundreds of miles away from Ramsay Bolton, whom she has never met and hopefully will never meet, thank you very much.

Oh, Lady Stoneheart. We could’ve had it all.

But why have “a strong female character” go through such boring trials like getting powerful men to rethink their life choices, having female friends she can actually trust, and showing potential suitors who’s boss in a fucked up, patriarchal world? The better dramatic choice is clearly further sexual abuse to a character who has already been abused greatly. And since no one wants to watch a naïve little girl become an empowered woman in her own right without pointless violence happening along the way, let’s give Sansa the Lady Stoneheart (aka zombie Catelyn) arc while we’re at it. Sansa’s path towards empowerment is NOT about being all sassy and dark and shit.

Add this to my plea to the media: Putting a weapon in a woman’s hands does not make her story more interesting. Making a woman a sex object does not make her story more interesting. Abusing a woman does not make her story more interesting. I’m not saying these things can never contribute to character development, but when these are the only things that you show happening to a female character, that’s lazy and sexist. It’s not good storytelling.

Header image via HBO. Image of Sansa in a black dress via feministfiction. Calendar Art of Sansa and the Hound by John Picacio, featured on Geekextreme. Image of Sansa and Margaery, Calendar Art of Lady Stoneheart via Fanpop (1) (2).

Katy Mastrocola enjoys contemplating everything, stuffing her soul with chocolate, and hunting for Pokemon. She spends her spare time coming up with crazy theories for her latest obsessions, which happen to be A Song of Ice and Fire and Steven Universe.

16 Responses

Then there was that time Sansa talked Joffrey out of running down a woman during the bread riots. Then that time she got a wounded soldier (who had helped abuse her) to a Maester in the middle of a battle. Then that time she walked an epileptic child across a severely windy mountain pass three feet wide over an enormous abyss while talking him down from a panic attack. And that time she pled for Jeyne’s safety. Then that time SHE fought Lysa off before Petyr Baelish showed up. And the time she figured out that Lyn Corbray was his catspaw. And that time she went to her first meeting with Dontos carrying a knife just in case it was a trap. Or all the moments she references history, music, and literature like a total nerd.

TBH I’m only just now getting to know the book Sansa through this blog. But the obvious answer to your question (and many points raised in the blog entry) is, that’s the beauty of a book: it can develop characters in so much more finessed detail.

TV is not only shorter in time but also faster. In theory, you can rewind and watch a scene again, just as you can re-read text or control the pace of your reading, but moving-image media has to nail a point home in real time. This must force a degree of pantomimish simplification of characters.

I’m getting all you and the blogger are saying, and this might just be my impression – but for me Sophie Turner delivers her dialogue in Season 2 through gritted teeth. Sansa’s seething. The words say one thing, her face another. Defiant, not broken or in despair. Survivor rather than victim.

As Maisie Williams put it, had the TV Arya and Sansa reversed roles, both characters would be dead long before now. And basic storytelling rules dictate that when two gruelling character arcs span 5 seasons, they can’t end in anti-climax. Sansa has been exercising “suppressed agency” the whole time.

IMHO the whole malarkey of replacing Jeyne Poole as Ramsay’s wife has not assassinated Sansa’s character arc. Despite everything, she’s still In the fight, plotting against him. Wouldn’t a helpless, pathetic Sansa have called Littlefinger’s bluff when he offered her a choice – the chance to ride to Castle Black to be with her half-brother? Instead, she says, “Winterfell is my home, it’s the people who are strange.” Is she not punching above her weight as a lone Stark amongst Boltons, with such a daring, defiant assertion?

You make a good point that the TV show can’t possibly adapt some of the finer details of a character’s storyline, and I agree that show definitely tried to give Sansa some stronger moments. However, if you actually read the books, you will understand that Sansa’s character arc as a whole is just so much more nuanced, symbolic, hopeful and in my personal opinion, interesting, than what she has been presented with on the show. I think using Sansa to replace Jeyne was a lazy writing choice because the same thing is happening to Sansa twice. I don’t think Ramsay’s abuse of Sansa has ruined her as a character-she is still very strong and I have no doubt she will get her revenge-but I think the dramatic choice to replace her entire book plotline with further sexual abuse is lazy. I don’t know who your favorite character is, but let’s take Tyrion for example. Let’s say instead of following Tyrion’s plotline of meeting Daenerys, the showrunners decided he needed to be tortured even more in order to have a more just cause for “revenge” against his family and have him sent back to King’s Landing where he falls in love with another whore, finds the whore in bed with Jaime, kills his brother, and then kills Cersei. Would this plotline be shocking and generate ratings? Absolutely. But it wouldn’t be as interesting or as developing as Tyrion exploring Essos and becoming Daenerys’ adviser.
I think what people are frustrated about is not just the one scene of Sansa being abused by Ramsay, but the fact that this keeps on happening to her over and over again while some of her best, most powerful moments from the books are erased.
I highly doubt I can change your mind, but I just want you to understand where many book readers are coming from.

You’re right, you haven’t changed my mind because I already share your frustration with the protracted abuse and brutalisation of Arya and Sansa, both of whom are long overdue some tangible results to show for their trouble. Both volcanoes need to erupt in a mindblowing fashion to justify the pregnant expectation that has swelled inside us.

As a TV viewer, I’m disappointed, too, that Sansa’s arc has gone snake-shaped. But Maisie has promised us that what currently seems like a weird tangent in her story and motivation will make sense in the end; and I believe Sophie is interpreting her character as positively as she possibly can.

Yes, de ja vu (sp?) is not the best storytelling device, whichever character it happens to. Agreed, Sansa’s arc needs to mirror Tyrion’s. He’s having a Gandalf moment after the battle of Pelennor, consorting with the big players on the final strategic move. She needs the armies of Stannis and Roose/Ramsay to slaughter each other so that she can rise from the chaos as Queen of the North, hopefully playing Littlefinger more than he plays her. This and the war against the Walkers would set up a grand 3-pronged finale.

A well done article on how my favorite Game of Thrones character got the short end. Another example of her strength and bravery I might say are Sansa’s pleading and manipulation of Joffrey into saving Ser Dontos Hollard as a fool.

Really excellent piece! I’ve always been a big fan of book-Sansa myself and never understood why so much of the fandom disliked her. She’s one of the few legitimately innocent characters in a universe that is decidedly unromantic and has had to come to terms with that via constantly having abuse heaped upon her. The primary issue fans, and apparently HBO producers, seem to have with her is that she isn’t a spunky beacon of butt kicking girl power, but rather a non-combat oriented behind the scenes type of character. How would she be perceived if she were a male character? Littlefinger seems to be fairly well-liked, for example.

A male character in Sansa’s TV role would be instantly derided as a wimp and attract no sympathy whatsoever. A boy would be expected to man up and fight his own battles. Under so-called patriarchy we’re excluded from the option of being the helpless victim, dependent on someone else to rescue us, and from being cute or pretty or evocative enough to attract such rescuers.

Have you ever seen a girl aged 19 in tears on the steps outside a nightclub on a Saturday night? And a boy the same age in the same state? Guess which one is immediately surrounded by a crowd of concerned sympathisers and which one cries alone.

Jed, I agree that men who face abuse (both on TV and in real life) often do not get the sympathy they deserve and that is problematic. However, your tone seems to suggest invalidation of the very real problems and abuse that women go through, both in Game of Thrones and in real life.
A patriarchal society (and yes, a society where women are tabooed if they don’t take their husband’s last name is still a patriarchy, even if it’s not as extreme as cultures that are more violent towards women) is just as harmful to men as it is to women because it reinforces that men have to adhere to certain macho stereotypes in order to be a “real” man and can’t possibly be victims of sexual violence unless they’re “pathetic” and “weak” or…a “girl” (see what I did there?).
As bad as things are for male victims of sexual abuse-or just any sort of abuse in general, I find it highly ignorant that you automatically assume that women receive the support they need. There’s a reason why most women don’t press charges when they get raped-just read any news story about women getting raped on a college campus and you’ll see death threats against her, people calling her a liar and a slut and that she “deserved” it, accusing her of ruin her rapist’s “life.”
Men and women need to support each other if we’re ever going to overcome gender expectations and eradicate sexual violence. I’d urge you to consider the very real fear that most, if not all women, have in society of being assaulted and maybe why we’re sick of seeing sexual violence happening to women over and over again, even in stories.

I would also add that in Outlander (which just finished up its first season), a male character does experience an extreme amount of sexual violence, and there’s not an absence of that sort of representation on television. Outlander, especially the TV series (the books are iffy), is an explicitly feminist work, and by deconstructing the patriarchal values of its setting it allows a male character to grieve and respond to sexual assault without judgment.

@Katy Much of that is fair, and certainly less partisan and more balanced than the responses I’m used to getting from militant feminists on social media; not so much the parts where you attribute words to me that I didn’t actually type. But your awareness that “patriarchy” is a double-edged sword elevates you head-and-shoulders above the average Sister.

College gender wars are hardly one-sided, though. On youtube etc you can find abundant anecdotes of the manner in which the feminist Faith Militant deals with boys accused of rape on campus.

PS I don’t assume anyone gets the support they need, or that anyone’s fear of violence is groundless. I merely observed a deep-rooted “patriarchal” cultural tradition which positions girls as damsels in distress and boys as the white knights or villains of the piece.

What do you make of Sansa’s portrayal in Season 1 Episode 2? Does this deviate from the book? She rats on her sister by failing to refute Joffrey’s lie that Arya and Micah attacked him. This probably leads Sandor to believe the law requires him to carry out Joffrey’s order to execute the butcher’s boy, that being the penalty for assaulting a prince.

Sansa’s uppermost concern during the altercation (“Stop it, you’re spoiling everything”) is that it might threaten her dream of marrying Joffrey, while three people, including her sister, are under threat of serious injury, or worse.

This is exactly the same as it is in the books, and it’s called Sansa is 11, naive, selfish, and stuck in a difficult decision. If Sansa didn’t make poor choices (like the rest of the Starks did, I might add) in the very early stages of her character development, how would she grow and learn from her mistakes? She also has a habit of “rewriting” past events in her head to make them fit in with her worldview. This makes her flawed, but interesting. Some people will never forgive her for her poor choices during the first book, but I find it telling how people are so willing to hate on a naive 11-year-old girl for making choices she genuinely thought were right ones (even if she was totally wrong) when there are people in this world who do far, far worse (like Jaime Lannister, the Hound, Tyrion) who are adored by the fandom and can do no wrong.
And Sandor was just following Joffrey’s orders because he was desensitized to cruelty at that point, but after getting to know Sansa and seeing how Joffrey abuses her, he starts to question his role serving Joffrey, and ultimately abandons him at the Battle of Blackwater.

Thanks for explaining! I didn’t know which agenda (if any) to form in my head in advance of knowing the answer to my question, i.e. it was an honest question.

Of course there must a learning curve and character arc or it’s a waste of major characters who are so young at the beginning of a story.

I was considering Sansa in isolation and wondering whether the TV version departed from the book by assassinating her character, even at 11 – though her age is slightly less a mitigating factor in the TV series, having been advanced by 2 years (along with the other child characters except Tommen who magically and conveniently is 8 years older when the timeline of the story has advanced by only 4).

BTW is Tommen 12 in the book when he consummates his marriage to Margaery?

Were I Sansa, aged 13, (even with her short history as a Wolf in a harsh world) I would have found the altercation terrifying and horrifying and just plain wanted it to stop, period. The fact the prince of my dreams had just betrayed himself as a dangerous bully and a coward, would be the second thought to enter my head and shatter those dreams after the event. It would take some “rewriting” of the incident to remain in self-denial about the stark evidence of my own eyes.

Joffrey is young, too, and doesn’t get much of an arc as the sadistic spoiled rich kid who becomes an even more sadistic spoiled rich king, though Jack Gleeson tries make the most of little nuances of conscience that develop around the edges of his cruelty.

Its a shame Sansa doesn’t get any redeeming dialogue like, “I’m so sorry, Arya, sorry for everything.” Or did I miss it? Arya forgives her anyway, and never forgives the Hound, and I thought the fans were on her side, not his. Jaime and Tyrion get multiple chances to redeem themselves, Jaime in part by giving Brienne the honour and respect she deserves, commissioning her to save one Stark child, having crippled another.

As I typed before, Arya and Sansa have been threatening to rebel for so long, their rebellions need to manifest and impact on the story in big way, and before the end of this season (not much chance of that in 2 remaining episodes) or the showrunners’ heads should be the next ones on spikes.

At least the fans are on Sansa’s side, and if she kills Ramsay with that pointy thing she picked up on the ramparts, as the Bolton/Stannis forces massacre each other, and then emerges as the Lady of Winterfell, she ought to rise in the fans’ estimation.

There is even a theory that her arc mirrors Queen Elizabeth’s (first of her name, not the second), another redhead, and Sansa will be next on the Iron Throne.